88 THE AVANT-COURIERS. 



thirty degrees south of west As the wagon- 

 road passes upon the adjacent ridge a quarter 

 of a mile to the south of this spring, some of 

 us, to procure a draught of its refreshing wa- 

 ter, pursued a path along the ravine, winding 

 through dense thickets of underbrush, matted 

 with green-briers and grape-vines, which, with 

 the wild-currant and plum-bushes, were all 

 bent under then* unripe fruit. The wildness 

 of this place, with its towering chffs, craggy 

 spurs, and deep-cut crevices, became doubly 

 impressive to us, as we reflected that we were 

 in the ver>- midst of the most savage haunts. 

 Often wiU the lonely traveller, as he plods his 

 weary way in silence, imagine in each click 

 of a pebble, the snap of a firelock, and in 

 every rebound of a twig, the whisk of an 

 arrow. After regaling ourselves with a 

 draught of the dehcious beverage which 

 gushed from the pure fountain, we ascended 

 the rugged heights and rejoined the caravan 

 half a mile beyond. 



We had now a plain and perfectly distui- 

 guishable track before us, and a party of avant- 

 couriers,^ known in the technical parlance of 

 the Prahies as * runners,' soon began to make 

 preparations for pushing forward in advance 

 of the caravan into Santa Fe, though we were 

 yet more than two hundred miles from that 

 city. It is customary for these runners to take 

 their departure from the caravans in the night, 

 in order to evade the vigilance of any enemy 

 that might be lurkhig around the encamp- 

 ment They are generally proprietors or 



